Nitish Kumar is a master betrayer, says Mulayam Singh Yadav

NEW DELHI: Coming down heavily on Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s decision to return to the BJP fold, Samajwadi Party (SP) patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav said that not only had the Janata Dal (United) chief betrayed his erstwhile partner Lalu Prasad Yadav, he had cheated Congress president Sonia Gandhi and him as well. In an exclusive interview with ET Magazine, Mulayam raised questions about Nitish’s credibility as a politician.

“Are these the ethics of ruling; is this politics?” On Wednesday, Nitish Kumar ended a 22-month alliance with Lalu’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), taking a ‘zero-tolerance for corruption’ stand. That, however, cuts no ice with Mulayam. “A politician must know that going back on one’s word also comes within the realms of corruption.” On being asked if he has reached out to Lalu Prasad Yadav – whose youngest daughter Rajlakshmi is married to Mulayam’s grandnephew and Mainpuri MP Tej Pratap – he replied in the negative. “This is not the right time to talk to him; abhi mahaul nahi hai baat karne ka; he is busy talking to his legislators, charting his next course of action.” Calling Nitish’s “charkha-daav” (master strategy) nothing short of dhokha (betrayal), Mulayam said he has “mastered the art of betrayal.”

He recounted how Nitish was first with the BJP till 2013; Lalu was till then his arch-enemy. “Then in 2015 he fought with all his might to stop the BJP from entering Bihar. When he realized he would not be able to save his kursi, he HAS conveniently fell back in the lap of the BJP using the excuse of ‘intolerance for corruption’.”

With Bihar’s mahagathbandhan in tatters, what lies ahead for the ‘grand alliance’ in the works to take on the BJP in 2019 Lok Sabha polls? “Rahul Gandhi does not have it in him (to lead the opposition camp); all of us will have to sit down forgetting all our ideological differences to take on the BJP in 2019,” said the former three-time chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.

“I am thinking hard on an opposition strategy for 2019; but we all will have to do things very differently from what we are doing right now.”